‘Complete and total disaster’: Trump slams Biden over H1N1 response despite larger Covid-19 death toll

US President Donald Trump is using Joe Biden’s handling of H1N1 as his latest excuse to go after the former vice president, whom he will presumably face off against in November’s presidential election.

“Joe Biden’s handling of the H1N1 Swine Flu was a complete and total disaster,” the president tweeted on Tuesday morning. “Even polls on the matter were terrible!”

Trump’s tweet follows a report published earlier this month by Politico, detailing the Obama administration’s response to the H1N1 Swine Flu crisis in 2009 and 2010, based on interviews with various former officials who describe Biden as a setback during the process. Biden’s chief of staff at the time, Ron Klain, admitted it was only “luck” that kept the crisis from becoming “one of the great mass casualty events in American history.”

It is estimated the crisis resulted in over 12,000 deaths and 60 million cases in the US before a vaccine was released in November of 2010. The Covid-19 pandemic has meanwhile claimed around 100,000 lives, and over 1.6 million cases have been confirmed. 

The president’s criticism also appears to be a response to a recent effort by Biden’s presidential campaign to capitalize on criticism of Trump over his pandemic response. Recent ads released have accused the administration of freezing “like a deer in the headlights” over coronavirus, being “unprepared” and “indecisive.”

Biden also criticized the president for a recent viral photo of him golfing, to which Trump replied by saying the former vice president spent his time in office “constantly vacationing, relaxing & making shady deals with other countries.”

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